The present invention relates to gear assemblies, and more particularly, to planetary gear assemblies.
Generally, planetary gear assemblies include a sun gear, a ring gear, and planet gears between and engaged with the ring gear and the sun gear. Each of the planet gears are typically coupled to a carrier using a shaft about which the planet gears rotate. In one application, the ring gear can be held fixed while the sun gear can be driven by a shaft to cause the planet gears to rotate about their respective shaft and about the sun gear. In such an arrangement, the carrier can be used as an output of the planetary gear assembly. In other applications, any one of the carrier, sun gear or ring gear can be held fixed and any of these components can be used as the input or output.
One known application of planetary gear assemblies is in transmissions, particularly automatic transmissions for a vehicle.